"We expected a weak report, and what we got was even weaker," said Patrick O'Keefe, director of economic research at J.H. Cohn.

The report was partially helped by 22,000 state workers in Minnesota returning to work after a temporary government shutdown in July, but was also hurt by 45,000 Verizon workers on strike in August.

Adjusting for those events, the economy probably added more like 23,000 jobs in August -- still dismal compared with monthly gains of about 200,000 earlier this year.

Focusing on the one-time blips is like giving a skunk a dinner mint, O'Keefe said. "It's still a skunk and it still stinks."

Economists typically estimate the nation needs to add about 150,000 jobs each month to keep up with population growth alone. It needs even stronger growth to recover the 8.8 million jobs lost during the financial crisis.

Who is unemployed? About 14 million Americans remain unemployed and 42.9% of them have been out of work more than six months.

Blacks have it the worst, with an unemployment rate at 16.7% -- its highest level since 1984. The unemployment rate for Latinos was unchanged at 11.3% and the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%.

Another 2.6 million people were considered "marginally attached" to the workforce in August. They wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the last year, but were not counted in the unemployment figures because they weren't actively searching for a job in August.

Overall, the so-called underemployment rate, which includes those people, as well as people who want to work full-time but are forced to work part-time, rose to 16.2%.

The last time the government reported exactly zero jobs added in a month was in February 1945.

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